How has Japan become a major economic power, a world leader in the automotive and electronics industries? What is the secret of their success? The consensus has been that, though the Japanese are not particularly innovative, they are exceptionally skilful at imitation, at improving products that already exist. But now two leading Japanese business experts, Ikujiro Nonaka and Hiro Takeuchi, turn this conventional wisdom on its head: Japanese firms are successful, they contend, precisely because they are innovative, because they create new knowledge and use it to produce successful products and technologies. Examining case studies drawn from such firms as Honda, Canon, Matsushita, NEC, 3M, GE, and the U.S. Marines, this book reveals how Japanese companies translate tacit to explicit knowledge and use it to produce new processes, products, and services.

The knowledge-creating company : how Japanese companies create the dynamics of innovation

We may not be able to make you love reading, but archaeology of knowledge will lead you to love reading starting from now. Book is the window to open the new world. The world that you want is in the better stage and level. World will always guide you to even the prestige stage of the life. You know, this is some of how reading will give you the kindness. In this case, more books you read more knowledge you know, but it can mean also the bore is full.

The archaeology of knowledge

By Pierre Bourdieu (London: Routledge, 2010), xxx + 607 pp. £15.99 paper. A combination of social theory, statistical data, illustrations, and interviews, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judg...

Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste

Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers

Keywords: a Vocabulary of Culture and Society

This is one of the first books to introduce students to the key concepts and debates surrounding the relationship between bodily boundaries, abject materiality and spaces. The text includes original interview and focus group data informed by feminist theory on the body and uses case studies to illustrate the social construction of bodies. It will critically engage students in topical questions around sexuality, cultural differences and women's sub-ordination to men.

Bodies: Exploring Fluid Boundaries

Geographers are beginning to show interest in corporeality. The body is becoming evident in numerous geographical studies. It is timely, therefore, momentarily to ‘step back’ and address the questi...

Dis)embodied geographies

Often researchers position themselves in relation to race, age and gender, but the body is less often discussed as an actual ‘instrument of research’. We aim to extend thinking on this point by reflecting on a project we conducted on migrant women and food in New Zealand. We present a vignette as an example of how we used our bodies as ‘instruments of research’ at a ‘shared lunch’ attended by new migrants from a range of different countries. At the lunch some combined on their plates spicy dishes such as kimch’i (fermented vegetables) and sweet dishes such as pavlova (a meringue dessert). For others this combination prompted feelings of disgust. We conclude that the body is a primary tool through which all interactions and emotions filter in accessing research subjects and their geographies.

Using 'the body' as an 'instrument of research': kimch'i and pavlova

People’s visceral experiences of food – the tastes, textures and aromas – can tell us a great deal about their emotional and affective relations with place. Questions of bodies and embodiment are increasingly becoming a focus for geographers and migration scholars. In this article we extend some of this work by examining how the visceral can shape (and be shaped by) a range of socio-political relations. We concentrate on food and eating as a central political issue and illustrate how a visceral approach can push understandings of migrants’ experiences. We focus on a group of 11 migrant women from South Africa, Singapore, Korea, Iraq, Thailand, Hong Kong, Somalia, Japan, Indonesia, Mexico and India in their ‘new home’ in Hamilton, New Zealand. Each of the women prepared and cooked for us a dish that was significant to them in some way. These migrant women are comfortable in their domestic spaces and largely experience cooking not as a burden but as an important way of staying viscerally connected with their ‘old home’. Creating a domestic space where the body feels ‘at home’ can help resituate and reconstitute the diasporic subject. This kind of visceral approach is useful for informing the development of social policy.

/pdf/a-visceral-approach-cooking-at-home-with-migrant-women-in-27knwer90w.pdf

A visceral approach: cooking ‘at home’ with migrant women in Hamilton, New Zealand

Introduction There has been an increasing focus in feminist and pro-feminist inspired studies on examining men, male subjectivities and masculinities in the decade since Gender, Place and Culture began publication. Our aim in this article is to provide readers with a brief overview of some of this recent research, and then to place these works within a critique of the Anglocentric character of geographic knowledge production. The article proceeds in the following manner. We begin with a brief definition of masculinity, in order to stress its temporal and geographical contingency. We follow this discussion with a brief review of some of the research on masculinities undertaken in the past two decades, with a particular emphasis on studies of the social and cultural geographies of masculinity completed in the decade since Gender, Place and Culture began publication. It is important to note that our review is far from exhaustive, but rather, more indicative. Our purpose here is to provide a context for our s...

Robyn Longhurst

Papers

Bodies: Exploring Fluid Boundaries

Dis)embodied geographies

Using 'the body' as an 'instrument of research': kimch'i and pavlova

A visceral approach: cooking ‘at home’ with migrant women in Hamilton, New Zealand

Placing Masculinities and Geography